MWC 2013: IT4Energy presents the intelligent wastebasket

News from Feb. 22, 2013

At this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which takes place from 25-28 February 2013, the Competence Center IT4Energy will present an intelligent wastebasket, which recognizes its fill level with the help of infrared sensors and can transmit this information via radio interface.

About 20.000 wastebaskets can be found in the streets of Berlin, which have to be emptied on a regular basis. This is immensely time-consuming and expensive for city cleaning. It is then particularly aggravating when some of the trash baskets are only half full, and don’t have to be emptied yet. At this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which takes place from 25-28 February 2013, in Hall 8.1 Stand 8.1L4 the Competence Center IT4Energy will present an intelligent wastebasket, which recognizes its fill level with the help of infrared sensors and can transmit this information via radio interface. The advantage: Using the information from the sensor network made up by the entirety of wastebaskets, city cleaning can optimize its routes and only include those wastebaskets that are truly full. This relieves city cleaning’s employees, saves transportation costs and emissions, and limits the noise disturbance for residents.

The intelligent wastebasket was developed in cooperation with the Berliner Stadtreinigung (Berlin city cleaning BSR) in the European project OUTSMART. For this, the IT4Energy researchers tested several radio and sensor technologies (laser, ultrasound, infrared). Subsequently, they installed the sensor module and the communication interface in the wastebasket and implemented an application for visualizing the status of the wastebasket.

It is the goal of OUTSMART to show, with the help of a multitude of pilot technologies and services, how the Future Internet (FI) can contribute to tomorrow’s smart cities. OUTSMART is funded by the EU in its 7th Framework Programme and is a project in the “Future Internet Public-Private Partnership” (FI-PPP) program.